


Freudian Slip

by cerie



Category: Sanctuary (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-01-03
Updated: 2012-01-03
Packaged: 2017-10-28 19:39:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/311476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cerie/pseuds/cerie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Helen/Will; Attempting to treat Magnus's chronic insomnia results in a lot of witty banter and some questionable psychiatric technique.  R for suggestive dialogue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Freudian Slip

“Come on, Magnus. It’s got a lot of merit.”

Helen was fairly certain that Will’s chosen profession did not advocate hypnotism on a regular basis, at least not since the early 1900s, but she was willing to humor him to get him to concede the point. He’d worried and fretted over her since John’s disappearance, brow furrowed as he explained the parallels between his and Ashley’s seeming deaths were simply too much for her to tamp down and ignore any longer, especially since she paced the floors of the Sanctuary at night because sleep brought inexplicable nightmares instead of solace.

“I’ve really no idea how my nightmares have any connection to John or Ashley,” Helen scoffed, following him as he tugged her down the hallways to his office. He kept his books there, she knew, and a particularly nice chaise she’d picked up on a trip to India back in the sixties and Helen hoped desperately that he wouldn’t force her to lay on the couch while he psychoanalyzed her. That would simply be entirely too many clichés all at once.

“Magnus, sit. Take the couch and let me teach you something to relax. There’s no reason you should be awake at,” Will paused and checked his watch. “Three in the morning. No reason. Not even Henry on a caffeine bender is up this late without a project to work on. This isn’t anything weird or spooky, it’s just guided imagery. It’s just a way to let your mind relax and let your body drift to sleep. You need it and I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Well, he’d certainly talked enough about it. Helen imagined if she’d let him try this once and it didn’t work then perhaps Will would give up and try his pet theories out on someone else in the future. She sprawled on the chaise dramatically, closing her eyes and letting out a slow, deep breath in order to relax as best she could. The nightmares always woke her in cold sweats and she was still in robe and pajamas, feet bare because she’d misplaced her slippers two nights prior and hadn’t actually worked up the gumption to ask Big Guy to look for them. Oh, he would, eventually, and huff about it the entire time and Helen just wasn’t prepared to explain why she’d been absent enough to lose something.

“All right,” Will started slowly and Helen suppressed a shiver of surprise; he was using his therapist’s voice, low and soft and soothing in order to provide a safe space to explore the eccentricities of the mind. “I want you to think about a nice, safe place. You said you had a villa in Capri, right?”

Helen nodded slowly and waved her hand. “Go on, I’ve a villa in Capri.” She heard Will snort slightly and clear his throat, clearly trying to suppress whatever witty comeback he had for her cheek. Will was the sort of man to use humor as a sharply honed defensive and offensive weapon and Helen was in awe of it sometimes. She’d never been particularly humorous; that had always fallen to James or Nikola and never her.

“I want you to imagine standing on your balcony in Capri. You’re naked and the sun is streaming in and glittering off the water.” Helen dutifully kept her eyes closed and imagined that scene, the gauzy curtains she kept in her bedroom there billowing in the sea breeze and brushing against her bare skin. The wind lifted her heavy hair from her shoulders, blowing it into a mass of curls around her neck and face and the sun, oh, the sun was warm there.

“Now, I want you to breathe, Helen.” Helen shivered slightly; Will never called her Helen, in spite of the fact that she had dropped the formality of ‘Dr. Zimmerman’ within a few hours of meeting him. For him to call her Helen now was strangely intimate but she supposed engendering a sense of false intimacy was something a therapist had to learn to do fairly quickly in order to elicit trust and confidence in his or her patients. She breathed as instructed, slow and steady breaths that took her back to Capri as each second ticked past.

“You’ve left the balcony,” Will said lowly and Helen could tell by the shift in his voice that he’d drawn closer, moved from his desk to the chair that was settled next to her chaise. “You’re standing on the beach now, still naked, still in the sun. The water is close by and it laps at your feet, just at your toes for right now. I want you to curl your toes in the sand and tell me how you feel, Helen.”

The instruction startled her; Helen had gotten more than a little lost in the imagery and in Will’s voice and she curled her toes instinctually, letting out a long and slow sigh. She could almost feel the sand, the cool water lapping at her feet. The sand was gritty and provided enough of a contrast to her silken skin to be stimulating and thrilling and she laughed lightly.

“I feel the water, Will. It’s slightly cool. I must be there in autumn, as much of an autumn as Capri ever gets.”

Will was quiet for a long moment and Helen realized she must look patently ridiculous, curling and uncurling her toes at the suggestion of a beach, the real beach thousands of miles away. After a few moments of scrutiny, Helen cracked her eyes open slightly, surprised to see that Will had moved to sit on the floor near the head of the chaise, long fingers working their way into her hair and massaging her temples slightly.

“Close your eyes, Helen. Now. If you had nothing but time stretched in front of you and anyone in the world to bring to Capri, who would it be?” Helen started to speak, a name close to tumbling off her tongue when she felt Will’s finger pressed against her lips to shh her. “No, don’t tell me. I’m just facilitating the fantasy, Helen. You don’t need to tell me the details, the hows or the whys, and I don’t need to know who’s starring in this one, okay? Now, imagine the person you want with you most in the world on Capri, and they’re there. You have them as long as you want.”

Helen let out another slow breath, this one a little more ragged when she realized that in spite of Will’s efforts to remove himself from her fantasy he was there. She had never seen him nude below the waist but the mind was a funny thing and filled in details as much as she needed them. He was slightly more tanned than usual, indication that in this particular fantasy Will had been with her for quite a while, and his smile was wide with a hint of playfulness. Her breath came a little quicker when the fantasy turned sexual, the two of them kissing in the sand like some strange reenactment of From Here to Eternity and she vainly hoped the actual Will hadn’t noticed.

For his part, he kept his touch at her temples and in her hair, soothing touches paired with the occasional soothing word and after a few minutes of just fantasizing and taking herself away from the world Helen drifted back in, skin tingling here and there as she thought about just how ridiculously sordid and wrong that whole line of thought had been. Will hardly deserved to be given a starring role in her own pathetic sexual imaginings and especially not when he was trying to help her sleep.

“Must have been a good one,” Will said quietly, hint of humor back in his voice. His hands stopped massaging her temples but stayed in her hair, lightly stroking the curls. Helen sighed a little, thoroughly back to earth, and nodded. Still, what had been her tell? Her quick breathing as she’d imagined the way he tasted beneath her mouth? Her blush as she thought about how those long, elegant hands could play her until she strung tight and resonated need?

She didn’t expect his low voice in her ear, hand stroking her hair out of the way carefully so his words wouldn’t be muffled.

“I’m pretty sure the expression on your face was orgasmic. I kinda worried I was going to have to stop you before it got x-rated and we needed to have a talk.” Helen’s eyes flew open, embarrassed at the idea that she’d let her face tell so much when she hadn’t wanted the stupid fantasy anyway. Oh, sure, she occasionally touched herself and fantasized, but never about anyone actively in her life. A very few times it’d been John’s name on her lips when she came, mostly in those long years between Nikola’s disappearance and her pregnancy, and Nikola himself when the two of them had enjoyed a sexual relationship. She’d even thought of Will, once or twice in a moment of weakness, but for him to be right there while she thought about him…it was equal parts frightening and thrilling.

“It was good, yes. I’m…I’m fairly relaxed now, though, so your guided imagery has a bit of merit. I think I shall have to try it again sometime.”

Will watched her, smile playing at his lips as if he had a secret he desperately wanted to tell. Instead, he offered her a hand up off the chaise and Helen took it, gripping slightly harder than necessary just so she could get used to the feel of his hand. Research, of course. For later.

He leaned in against her cheek, lips hot against her ear as he whispered.

“Usually better if you touch yourself. But that’s just a personal opinion. Professionally, psychiatrists haven’t prescribed orgasms since the 1900s.”

Helen laughed, warm and throaty and releasing what little bit of negative tension her body still held. Oh, it felt good to laugh again and felt good to have someone to share that laugh with, especially since he wasn’t a member of the five and bound by source blood to accept her. He accepted her on her own merits and Helen found that rare and refreshing. She squeezed his hand slightly.

“Perhaps you should read up on Freud, then, and come up with a better prescription for the next time I can’t sleep.”

Will gave her a grin as he escorted her back to her room, one hand pressed low at the small of her back. Once at her door, he brushed a kiss against her forehead.

“Magnus, you’re a piece of work. Are you going to tell me who was on the beach with you?” Helen laughed again and shook her head, giggle threatening to escape her. Oh for the love of God. She hadn’t giggled in over a century.

“No. A lady has to keep her secrets.” Will looked puzzled and Helen was simply more amused, shaking her head as she padded off to bed. She would sleep better, so his guided imagery had worked, but she suspected the laughter had done a great bit more.

And next time, she fully expected a lecture on female hysteria and the orgasm. She expected no less of a psychoanalyst as astute as Will.

Nothing less.


End file.
